mind widely open

Simplicity is complexity resolved. - Constantine Brancusi

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My personal and brief evaluation of online education platforms

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is probably the first online education platform I used. At that time log-in was required. Google search led me to the site for information on Roth IRA. The video was informative. The guy who made the video wrote out the information on a blackboard. Watching it was like getting the advice from a friend. However, the somewhat amateur feel made one question the accuracy of the material. I haven't been back to the site for a while. The new design looks more professional. 

Coursera 

I was very excited about being able to access the same materials taught in top universities. Coursera covers a wider range of topics ranging from art to science. Rooted in academy and still largely academy driven, the videos resemble lectures given in the classrooms. Occasionally I found the angle too academic and does not directly address the challenges I am facing at work. One interesting example is the marriage of classroom objects to real world product. Professor Karl T. Ulrich taught a design class on Coursera. He used ice cream scoop in the lecture to demonstrate the design process. The final design was made into a real product through a Kickstarter campaign. Students who took the online course received the Kickstarter email. When I got a chance to check it out, the project was already over-subscribed.  

Udacity

I was attracted to the site by its founder. Sebastian Thrun's win in 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge (The Great Robot Race) was sure impressive. Many courses are taught by professionals so they are immediately applicable to my work. Having gone through a few courses, I am slightly bothered by the template guiding all course designs. The lecturers, often in pairs or groups, are trying too hard to be pleasant or funny. This somehow discounts the depth of the knowledge delivered. 

edX

The site definitely carries an Ivy League feel. For the closed registration, there is no lecture archive for viewing. Understandably viewing the lectures without class participation does not realize the course's full potential. However, for professionals who have full-time jobs, watching lectures while multitasking (e.g. doing housework) is the few ways we can spare the time for continuous learning. 

Youtube 

Youtube is the destination for knowledge practical and small, from fixing o ring, eye makeup, to throwing pottery. The challenge of using the site is the sheer amount of contents available. If you search "eye makeup tutorial" you get over 2 millions results. Sometimes finding the right content takes long than consuming it. 

I know there are many other sites I have not tried. Practically, between job, rest, social activities, reading print books and online contents, listening to podcast, four to five learning sites are the maximum I can handle. There will always be things I can't learn online - such as sailing :). 

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Notebook entrepreneur - a real weapon detector

Background:

Everyone of us comes up with business ideas all the time. Fewer of us act on them. And fewer of the fewer make the ideas reality. I have been an entrepreneur on a note book for years. I have yet acted on any of these ideas. However, having such ideas is fun in itself.

A real weapon detector

A California teenage were shot dead by police who mistook his replica gun for real assault weapon. Firstly, we can't ask every policeman to stay calm and carefully assess the situation as such when their own lives may be on the line. Secondly, we can't stop teenage doing silly things which sometimes may even cost their lives. Yet, in this technologically advanced era, why can't a real weapon be easily differentiated from a fake one? Can all guns be manufactured with a chip built in which sends out signal to a receiver installed on all police forces' weapons. A loud beep and flash lights indicate real weapon in presence. Of course there will be malfunctions and false detections. No technology is perfect, but it's better than guessing. The signal emission challenge a gun manufacturer will face is no different from any "internet of things" manufacturers - source of power, battery life, retro fitting, proximity...I would imagine this is as real problem to solve as making our house anticipating our needs.

[vnow]

some prediction of the next five years

Ease of life

Technology will continue to make life easier. Very soon when we sit down in our car at 6pm, the car will know we are about to go home. It calculates the best route based on real time traffic conditions. If the traffic is bad, the car may suggest we do our grocery shopping before heading back. The car “talks” with our smart phones. Our phone keeps our shopping list and “tells” the car which store we need to go to. If our calendar shows we have a dinner appointment, our car knows immediately when we sit in front of the steering wheel and will route accordingly. Want to do something fun instead of being stuck in traffic? Our phone suggests a few interesting events going on in our proximity. The car will then pick up the route.

All these data exit today, in separate places. For our lives to be wrapped in a seamless information net, the data needs to be connected to create intelligence. Doing so will require two things.

The devices talk to each other. The Internet of things.

The data sync. It’s not necessarily big in volume, but can be diversified in types. 

We still waste a lot of time every day by doing tasks separately. We used to go to specific stores to buy certain things. Grocery shopping in grocery stores, pharmacy in pharmacies, books in bookstores. Now most of the “operational” shopping (shopping needed to sustain our living) can be done online. I am very close to ordering toilet paper on Amazon. The rest of bathroom supplies are already from them. Brick and mortar stores will become even more specialized to provide the deep domain knowledge which can be consumed more pleasantly during face to face interactions. Think of wine, cheese, farmers’ market, clothing store that does styling...

  Meet-ups

With the time saved, we have more time to play. Very soon people will get tired of mass reaching, surface scratching, sentence reading online social interactions and long for the real face to face one. Meet-up will continue to do well but will become smarter in creating and suggesting activities. People will feel ok to interact with strangers when the right atmosphere is created. You don’t have to be a super extrovert for that initial hi to happen.

  Transportation

Considering how much time we spend on getting from place to place, the traffic is an inevitable candidate for the next wave of innovation. The challenge can be solved by either building smarter mass transportation or enhancing the efficiency of individual transportation. A smarter mass transportation will be faster, cleaner and more predictable. It will address the other annoying parts of not driving as well such as waiting time. Stations need to be redesigned.  They are the perfect venue for human interactions, for utilizing the small chucks of time (e.g. grocery shopping). I have seen some of such stations in Europe and China. I can only imagine US does even a better job. Efficiency in individual transportation relies on minimizing the human error and averaging out the different levels of driving competency. Self-driving cars seem to be an obvious answer. However, those who drive more inefficiently, not to stereotype, tend to be late adopters of newer technology. The whole system won’t improve significantly if only the already efficient becomes more so. There has to be huge incentives for less efficient drivers and cars to change. Just for the love of new technology won’t do. Maybe it’s a better designed car that is actually cheaper than what we own now. We do not have to pay the hefty price to be included in the technical advancement. After all, the whole society moves forward when even the bottom is lifted. Lifting the top is artificial.

  Health

The problem of the lack of health in some populations in the developed countries is not due to denied access to modern medical technology. People just don’t have interesting physical things to do. Not everyone cares whether they look fabulously thin. But everyone wants to do things that make them happy. Software is not going to solve that problem. Again it’s going to solve the problem for people already have the incentive and just need an organizer app. The real challenge is how to persuade an overweight single mom to exercise. Conditions for that to happen may not include downloading an app (and the prerequisite of owning a smartphone). She has to have the time. Her baby needs to be taken care of while she exercises. She needs places to do so. She needs a better diet. She needs a support network to provide mental reward. Addressing these issues of a less financially capable group may not make an entrepreneur rich fast. And it is not a challenge assigned only to social entrepreneurs.

The abundance of things

At some point the financial market will realize the ever-increasing appetite for growth rate is a fiction. Companies’ growth leads to the increasing supply of goods and services. The only way for the supply to become profit is through consumption. Everyone, in developed countries, emerging markets and poor nations, needs to buy more. This also means we need to get rid of what we already own and make room for the newer and shinier. We recycle, export to less developed countries (old Chinese cars in Lima), or hand down (Goodwill). Getting rid of things will become a business of its own. If the things we build today are meant to be replaced in just a few years, our rooms will fill up quickly. Eventually the total society cost of taking the old away, apart and making them disappear could even be more costly than producing new.

  Still exciting

This feels, once again, the verge of some fundamental changes. Web is the last wave I’ve observed. Elements for the next one are in the making. They are moving toward each other. There will be brilliant thinkers to connect the dots in ways previously unthought-of. There will be fortune-changing money moving into the direction. So many times, knowledge is not about creating new notions; it is about reinterpreting what’s already there and connecting the existing dots. So are innovations.

Would like to be part of it.

[vnow]

shall we slow down?

Does it take a professional designer to create a comfortable living space and intuitive products? I asked this question while vacationing in Shanghai. Many of the products I used every day are generic and bear no designer's name. Without the magic hand of a designer, the products are often made using the template drawn from the knowledge accumulated from previous generations' trial and error. However, implementation of such templates still requires the recognition of the current environment users are in. For example, everywhere in a modern society the light switch for a bathroom is placed either outside the room or on the wall besides the bathroom door, often on the right-hand side. Any other placement may cause confusion. A paper thin ceramic cup should round its rim to avoid the paper-cut sensation on the lip. Such details, if missed, do not reduce the products' functionality, but do create annoyance with each use and decrease the user's satisfaction.

Attention to details, especially those details that do not contribute to the appearance, is a deliberate design exercise. Pursuing only the perfect look, or the speed of production, makers often forgot the user's experiences with products is an integral part of the holistic feel. In a society where waiting for a taxi for more than a minute is considered unacceptable by many, few slows down to notice the cup's rim is too thin. Even when they do recognize the design defect, they choose to go for mass production rather than rework. The market is full of such products, though not meant to be one-time use, often ended up so because their lack of long-term appeal. Have you seen the opulently packed moon cakes or tea, both are popular gifts in China. The package can cost many times more than the product itself. The plastic products aisle in one of the biggest local super markets smells of toxic. Cell phones last roughly two years. The waste from products created hastily is appalling.

Why such a rush? Maybe Chinese are very competitive under our mild manner and philosophy. We are eager to catch up with the more developed world in the shortest possible time and at all cost. The bullet train system, one of the world's most advanced, was built in merely a few years; and runs on mountains of corruption. During the official's trail, argument was made for a more lenient punishment since he made the bullet train "possible". The same logical thinking dominates many development decisions balancing between short-term economical results and potential long-term environmental impact.

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2012 read list

I don't buy a lot of books. Once I acquire the ownership of a book I feel I have all the time in the world to read it; and all that time often means the books keeps on waiting. If I borrow a book from the library, the chance of it being read is much higher. This may not be the best deal for authors. But I do buy the books that I think are worth keeping. Here's the list of books I read in the past 10 months. I don't claim I've read every one of them back to back. Some of them are quite dry. But I tried :).

The Information - by James Cleick

A Little History of the World - by E. H. Gombrich

The Swerve - by Stephen Greenblatt

Moneyball - by Michael Lewis

How Music Works - by John Powell 

The Negotiation Fieldbook - by Grande Lum

Why Nation Fail - by Charles Mann and James Robinson

The Origin of Wealth - by Eric Beinhocker

A Short Story of Nearly Everything - by Bill Bryson

A Billion Wicked Thoughts - by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments - by George Johnson

Snuff - by Terry Pratchett

Girl in Translation - by Jean Kwok

All Marketers are Liars - by Seth Godin

The Price of Everything - by Eduardo Porter

Einstein - by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs - by Walter Isaacson

The Upside of Irrationality - by Dan Ariely

God's Hospital - by Victoria Sweet

Ask Me Why I Hurt - by Randy Christensen

The Architecture of Happiness - by Alain de Botton

[vnow]

How important is traffic source channel mapping?

In Google Analytics, a “channel” is consisted of “Source” and “Medium”. For example:

In addition to these two dimensions, Google provides no fewer than 20 variables in the “Secondary Dimensions” and a number of custom variables which users can further slice the data by.

Sitecatalyst approach is similar, so are the other tracking providers. All tools need to assign the incoming traffic to a channel in order to provide performance and ROI measurement. 

The multiple dimension approach is quite flexible. However, the seemingly flexibility is built upon hard works. Ongoing hard works. Channel mapping is not a one-time deal. The accuracy of measurement deteriorates as the mapping becomes obsolete.

Many companies suffer from outdated, inconsistent and inaccurate channel mapping. Though not a technically challenging task, it has some unique challenges.

Tagged vs. Detected. Channels such as SEM and Affiliates can be tagged with parameters defining the channels. Channels such as SEO rely on referring URL detection.

To what granular level should each channel be defined? Sometimes there seems to be unlimited combination of dimensions to view the data. Search engine, keyword type (Brand vs. non-Brand), match type, keyword category, conversion category, landing page, user status...

Which brings the next question, how to store all dimensions which are unique to each channel? What is the right data structure to support both cross-channel benchmarking as well as in-channel drill-down? 

When a channel is updated, what to do with the historical data? 

Who owns the definition? Who has the responsibility to keep it up to date?

When new business situation arises, what is the process to add or update channels?

As one can see these challenges and questions are intertwined. They require coordination among multiple functional teams within an organization.

The ownership is actually an important question. One may argue Marketing teams know what they are doing. Which is true, but the truth may come in shades of gray when the decision has direct impact on budgeting. Imagine an organization which heavily relies on SEM and measure the channel lead accordingly. It was agreed that SEM should not take full credit of the brand keywords as they usually cost less and performs better, also based on the assumption that users are already familiar with the brand. Pretty straightforward so far. What is the problem? The problem is – what is the definition of the brand keywords? Miss spelling should be included, but how about product name with brand in the phrase?

Imagine another situation. Marketing measures its channels based on last click. Understandably there is a lot interaction between search and SEO. One day the SEM performance dropped significantly. No business situation could explain such a sudden trend change. Investigation led to the discovery of a number of referring URLS being added to the SEO white list. As a result, SEO traffic surged and forced the SEM down on the last click basis.

When such discussions get heated, who in the organization can be the referee to consolidate the opinions, drive consensus and make the call when necessary? In my opinion, the analytical team is best suited for the job. However, it is ultra important the referee understands not only the numbers, but also the implication of such change on tracking and data warehouse.

It makes sense to store the dimensional data custom to each channel at the most granular level possible. Such refined data elements are the key to optimization. At the same time, a high-level channel mapping should be developed in support of cross-channel measurement.

As business condition changes, channel mapping should be reviewed and updated periodically. Online tools can be developed to make such review, approval and update process less painful.

Not all updates need to be fit retrospectively. When done, the owner should communicate and explain any trend change.

The mapping also serves as the guideline for tracking set up and data marts development.

Here is an example of high-level channel mapping I developed for one of my projects. Together with the mapping, two white lists and one black list are identified.

-    SEO refer -    Organic Social Media refer -    IP address to filter testing and invalid clicks

Using this mapping, the company is able to recognize 100% traffic coming to the site and understand the full click, impression to conversion path.

[vnow]

Taken with Instagram at San Francisco International Airport

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virtual connections create real community

I started receiving meetup email alerts on new meetup groups a few weeks back. The variety is eyeopening. This is one of the today's new groups. 

"Hi, Welcome to Aerial Silk group of Palo Alto and neighboring communities. Aerial Silk is one among the many aerial disciplines. It is a workout in all respects, but considered art, like ballet, with a touch of breathtaking tricks. Individuals perform Aerial Silks on a long fabric, made of polyester or synthetic nylon, suspended 20, 50, or more feet high. Aerial Silks are mostly performed at circuses, but many people now brings Aerial Silks to many events. This group focuses on learning and working on the silks. We share the basics of climbing, wrapping feet, staying suspended while performing transitions from each move, and drops. We also work on choreography. Aerial Silks is a very, very fun (sport) art to practice and requires flexibility, strength, creativity. The aerial equipment can be easily purchased online. Aerialists, beginners aerialists, and aerial lovers are welcome to join the group. See you soon! :)"

I would have never known people with such interest exist or how to connect with them! Two weeks ago I attended a co-founder meeting. The organization of the meeting was professional; the presentations valuable and the turnout impressive. The real human experience is still through face to face contact. The online tools help us to connect the dots.

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Made in China

A Chinese documentary on Chinese products - shoes, cosmetics, bicycles...The film is available on the Chinese video sharing site www.tudou.com. No English subtitle. For those who would like to share with our "foreign" friends or significant others (so they get a glimpse of the world we grew up), interpretation is needed :). 

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A bit extreme but not a bad idea! - floating startup vessel housing entrepreneurs without Visa http://t.co/VZhfbT0K via @bi_gettingthere

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B2B? C2C? It's now I2I. Another example of commerce going down to the individuals. Isn't that how commerce started? https://t.co/vrzTOaZy

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Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent - Forbes http://t.co/OQQA0raT

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7 txt msg every waking hour? Yes it's doable ;) - Teen girls exchange 4k texts a month | VentureBeat http://t.co/9sn4RCrZ via @venturebeat

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We can be living in three worlds - day, dream, game - Amazing Pictures Of Real People And Their Avatars http://t.co/eXTJ6t6K via @sai

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BI best practices - While putting together a strategy deck for building a business intelligence system, I... http://t.co/f2zMTyWi

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What goes down first is the customer service. I've been on the American Airlines line waiting to speak with one for the past 20 minutes!

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Life in A Day

Life is amazing, in its smallest way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFVr_cJJIY&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1